Dead chicken award

Do you award the dumbest mistake of the month with a “dead chicken award”? This works well with a younger team.

You’ve seen the rubber chicken that’s all swiveled up and looks dead that they sell at novelty shops – right? They are inexpensive and make a great gag award to the person on your team who makes the dumbest mistake in a month.

The winner gets to hang this “dead chicken” above his cube or outside his office for all to see, , , for a month or until the award is passed onto someone else. No doubt who made the biggest blunder with this little prize floating around.

When I introduce it, I usually award it to myself first, , , for a couple of reasons:
1. I make mistakes just like everyone.
2. I’m part of the team and have to earn that membership.

I mention this award to most of my IT Manager Institute classes. So far, I’ve never had anyone tell me that they know about it.

One class had a little fun with it as you can see by the picture below. Ed O’Kelley from Tennessee awards the “dead chicken award” to Heitor Miguel from Angola AFRICA because he was having trouble understanding just exactly what the “dead chicken award” was all about.

We told Heitor that he might have some explaining to do as he went through airport security.